Stargirl

"The echo of her laughter is the second sunrise I awaken to each day, and at night I feel it is more than stars looking down on me."


If you want a light-hearted book, this is it. It landed on my hands as a gift for my 17th birthday. In its simplicity, it reflected so much of who I was and how my life was as a teen.

The story is about the heartbreaking first love of a girl who decided to call herself Stargirl, and a boy named Leo. Stargirl Caraway is anything but normal. She is new in Mica High, and she goes around with her ukulele singing happy birthday to a day's celebrators. She cheers for the other school's basketball team. She sends birthday gifts anonymously. She does all these, making her different from her peers.

Leo, is fascinated with Stargirl in a different way. They become a couple, but the problem enters when he urges her to stop doing what makes her special. With her singular personality, even Leo is shunned in his own school. He wants Stargirl to be normal. It is a lovely tale that illustrates both the troubles and inspirations of a first love. As stated in the back cover of the book, it is a "celebration of nonconformity."

I was Leo in the book. Those were days when peer pressure dictated so much of what I did, especially in my early high school days. I ended up shunning a guy I really liked, whom I thought at that time was very special, except I listened instead to my so-called friends. Another reason I did that was because I didn't like being teased. It's a very shallow thing to even consider, and I regret it. Although I apologized more than a year after and gave him the honest explanation he deserves, I knew things wouldn't be the same again even after telling me that he never had any hard feelings.

It still makes me wonder after all these years how things would have been like had I not listened to my friends. But this book has taught me and made me see that it isn't an experience of regret, but an experience of learning.